Aubade
by IShouldBeOverThis
Summary: Fluff and total smex  like most of my stuff. Another chapter of John & Sherlock in the morning, humorous and not explicit, although earlier chapters are.  Don't own: yada, yada
1. Aubade

The early morning sun was just lighting up the edges of the windows. I lay with my head on John's shoulder, arm thrown across him as I liked to be. John's shirt had rucked up in the night, leaving a strip of his belly bare. I lazily moved my hand across it, enjoying the smooth soft skin, the feel of his muscles beneath my fingers. I slid my hand up, under the t-shirt, stroking gently against his ribs and I felt him shudder slightly. Curious I moved my hand lower, over his crotch and found his penis hard. Surprising? I began to stroke it gently through the pajama bottoms. His hips wiggled involuntarily but his breathing remained regular as if he were still asleep. I stroked harder and heard his breath hitch.

"Sherlock?"

"Mmmm…"

"That feels good."

"Good." I slid my hand under his waistband, and ran my hand over the smooth skin of his cock, rubbing my thumb over the head. We stayed like that for some time. Me just languidly stroking him, occasionally moving my hand back up to rub his chest, his nipples, his belly.

"Well," I said at last, as his breathing became more ragged, "what should we do now?"

"I don't know. What should we do, genious?"

"Mmm, you could make love to me, I suppose."

"You suppose?" he asked, rolling over to face me. He leaned in and kissed me, hard, tongue pushing in, mouth open. I responded in kind. I wanted him desperately by this point, and I knew he wanted me.

He pushed me onto my back and knelt between my legs, tugging my pajama bottoms off and tossing them off of the bed. He removed his own so quickly I was barely aware of him moving away. He reached for the lube on the headboard. I felt so open, so eager for him.

He pushed into me with one hard thrust and I gasped, clutching at his back, my legs wrapping around him tightly. I ran my hands along his tightly muscled back as I had his chest as he moved inside me. I could tell he was struggling to hold back, to warm me up, but I didn't need that.

"Take what you need," I whispered. He was pressed so tightly against me, my cock crushed between us. And when he began to thrust harder, gripping my shoulders I could feel myself building. His desperate urgency, his desire for me was overwhelming. I couldn't believe it sometimes. When most people couldn't stand to be around me for more than ten minutes, John liked me, John loved me. John wanted me, wanted this, my gangly limbs wrapped around him, my thin chest pressed against him.

"Are you going to come," I gasped against his neck.

"Oh, yes, yes." And I could feel him bucking against me, four, five, six quick thrusts. I could actually feel him, shooting into me and I came with him, my semen hot and sticky between our bodies.

He collapsed against my chest, "God, I feel like I'm in high school," he giggled. Despite our heightened sensitivity he kept moving against me as if he didn't want this contact to end.

Reluctantly he pulled away, "I don't suppose there's a clean towel? I'll go get one."

When he left, I rolled to my side, my legs pressed together, unwilling to let the moment go, running over every second of it in my mind. Returning he slipped in beside me, wiping my stomach and I curled back into him once more, my head on his shoulder.


	2. Impromtu

In truth, John was awake as soon as the door opened. He felt the air shift in the room; the cold air of the hallway blowing in over his shoulder. Sherlock padded quietly into the room on bare feet. At least he wasn't comically walking on his toes like some cartoon character. There was a muffled "Ooof," and the bed shook a little. John had to bite his lip from laughing at the scourge of the London criminal class barking his shin on the bed in the dark. He watched as the flashlight app from Sherlock's phone lit the foot of the bed in cool light. Sherlock was fumbling for his pajamas when there was a wild play of light across the ceiling and a whispered, "Bloody Hell!" followed by a crack as the phone hit the floor.

Somehow Sherlock fumbled his way into his pajamas without further mishap, but it was when he was trying with little success to scrabble the phone into its charging cradle that John finally said conversationally, "You know, people are going to think that you drink if you keep damaging the charge port of your phone like that, not to mention cracking the phone screen if you keep dropping it. It makes you look careless of your possessions, which you are, but you usually do better at hiding it."

At the first word Sherlock had actually leapt into the air from surprise. This was getting better and better.

There was a deep sigh and Sherlock resumed breathing. "I'm sorry I woke you."

"It's ok. I was awake before you shook the bed. Ex-soldier and medic you know."

"I was trying to be considerate," Sherlock said with a sad little sigh.

"I know. And I know that it doesn't come naturally to you. Thank you for the effort. Come to bed."

Sherlock snuggled in with his back to John and purred contentedly.

John was always faced with a dilemma when spooning Sherlock. Should he put his thighs under Sherlock's so that his crotch was pressed into Sherlock's bum, but his face was pressed into Sherlock's shoulder blades, or should he leave his own legs straight and press tightly against Sherlock's back with his face at Sherlock's neck? He decided on the later, wrapping Sherlock in his arms and nosing into his hair.

"You're bloody freezing!"

"I had to open the windows."

"I don't want to know, do I?"

"I don't think so."

"Mmm. Will it all be gone by morning?"

"I think so. That is, it should be."

"Well, that's good then. You should come to bed sooner."

"I know, I know! I should sleep more and eat more and do less dangerous things because I worry my boyfriend and…"

"Yes, you should, should, should, and do, but I was actually thinking that you should come to bed sooner so that we can just do this."

John pulled Sherlock more closely to him and grasped Sherlock's hands in his own. "You should come to bed earlier so that I can hold you as you fall asleep."


	3. Interlude

Sherlock is sprawled next to me as I write this. He's naked, which is highly distracting, but he's deeply asleep, and as I've mentioned before, if Sherlock is voluntarily asleep or eating, I try not to disturb him.

I have been thinking about how I came to be here, in this relationship, a homosexual relationship, with this impossible man. Impossible and brilliant and irritating and capable of great compassion if he would only let himself go.

But he only lets himself go when he's with me, and I am more grateful than I can express that it's to me that he shows his true side. And I know not to push him for more than he can give at any one time.

What were the steps in between meeting him at Bart's that day (dare I say fateful day? He would laugh, correction—will laugh when he reads this for my fanciful turn of phrase, but I stand by it) and now, watching his long white arms splayed out across our bed, listening to the tiny moist sound and occasional mumble from his mouth and loving him so much that sometimes I feel that I will collapse into my own chest for the pressure of it on my heart?

There was admiration at first. That incredible power of deduction in action that took everything apart and put it back together in seconds, and the agility and the intensity, being caught up in his enthusiasm and the excitement that I didn't know that I needed. And of course a glowing pride that I had somehow caught his attention, and when I would earn his praise.

Next there was deep affection for (along with deep frustration with) his wildly vain and flawed being; well-founded concern for his health, and a comfortableness in being with him around the flat, and then…

Then there was the consciousness of HIM. I mean one can't avoid acknowledging his beauty. Everyone has the hots for him, probably even Anderson. I saw it when I first saw him at Bart's when I thought he looked 12. But beyond the force of his personality and a superficial appreciation of his looks, it was the growing awareness of his body next to mine, his breath when he was excited, the flash of his eyes when observing, the way they went wide when he'd solved it. Then I found myself too aware of his long fingers on his violin or over his keyboard (I'm still typing this two-fingered, he'll be up and out the door before I've written everything I want to say, LOL), or the long legs as they ran up our stairs, easily outpacing me.

But I denied it to myself, of course. I mean I was deeply invested in being the straight one in the family. I'd never been remotely attracted to any man before. Even if he'd been a woman, he wouldn't have been the type of woman that I would go for. I liked them small and curvy with long, thick hair. Not all long bony limbs and boyish body, that was Harry's department.

Against my will and almost to my horror, I found myself aware of more than his fingers, which could be passed off as admiration for his skill, but instead of the way his hair looked all soft and tousled from those same fingers, of his long neck and slender body. But it was when I found myself too aware of the curve of his bum when it was pressed into me in some tight scrape in which we found ourselves, and of his mouth, plush and sculptured into that bow, that I knew I was going to have to reexamine everything I thought I knew about myself. And I panicked, because what on earth could I possibly do with this feeling for an asexual man with whom I shared a flat, and whom I would see and touch and smell everyday.

Unbeknownst to me he was having the same existential crisis that I was. It was even harder for him because he was so locked up in his belief that he was incapable of affection, attraction or even feeling. I at least knew attraction when I felt it and had read Kinsey. I knew that we love who we love, not some biological function. He can be remarkably obtuse about himself. He admits now that he felt something that first night, a thrill in my admiration that went beyond a sense of getting his due respect from people like Dimmock or Lestrade. He realized that he _wanted_ to be nice to me, to make me happy and even more tellingly to see my smile or hear my laugh. He wanted to please me beyond impressing me with his brain. That terrible time when my life was so immediately in danger shook him to the core.

He also says he finds me very attractive which I cannot fathom when I look at myself in the mirror, all eyes and nose and ears. He says that he liked looking in my eyes and watching me open them even wider, or seeing me quirk a smile with my thin lips.

And so, we might have gone on forever, two confused and sexually frustrated men trying not to think about the other. We probably would have parted company, despite the friendship.

I know you're thinking, "Ok, so how did it come together? How'd you get from unresolved sexual tension to being naked in bed with each other this morning?" (Actually, I have my pajama bottoms on. The laptop would be too hot without it.)

It's too pedestrian to write, really. It wasn't like the movies, where we collapsed against each other, tearing our clothes off. You're never quite sure that someone else wants to be kissed. You end up sort of leaning in and hoping they'll meet you part way, and it takes a moment to get the details right.

It was a touch of hands. A real touch, not just something that could be played off as accidental. And we both stared at our joined hands, and then at each other, and then, rather comically back down to our hands. And he started stuttering out how it was awkward and if I was uncomfortable then he could move, or he would help me move, and some other nonsense that I can't remember. And I moved towards him and he kind of moved towards me and we had our first awkward and slightly embarrassing kiss, but it was consensual and it was electric for me and sort of overwhelming for him and there we were, two confused and sexually frustrated men who were thinking only about each other.

I won't say that the other steps were easy. We both had a lot to learn and we both had a lot of preconceptions to get over, but really, despite what the bigots says, "normal" hetero-sex begins with some weird sensations and experimentation and exploration. Hey, don't be angry with me girls, but we don't have to take a break for a week a month. And faking an orgasm is not really possible.

Oh, don't get me wrong I'm still affected by the female form. Selma Hayak, for example. Phwoar! Angelina Jolie. Fast as you could throw them under me. I've told him if I have to loose him to a crime or an experiment, or to moodiness and madness now and again, he will have to tolerate giving me a freebie if I ever met them. Which is not likely, of course. :)

But now I find my eye caught by a high cheekbone on a long slim model in a Dolce ad or across a billboard in a sleek black suit by Hugo Boss-either sex as long as they're androgynous-and my breath will catch, and my mouth will go dry, but they're just a poor imitation of the real thing (I was going to write pale but nobody is as pale as Sherlock).

As a side note, Mycroft gave me an album of Sherlock's pictures from babyhood on. He was always exquisite. Oh, Sherlock was furious, of course. He threatened to burn it and I threatened to damage his violin if he did. I keep one from his university days in my wallet.

But I know he keeps a picture of me in uniform in his.

There are times I am overwhelmed by his love for me. Sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. Afraid that I will never be able to live up to it. That someday I will be found wanting in his mind and will go back to being one of the idiots, so easy to delete from his hard drive. He reassures me every day that this is not the case. Not always in words, but in effort, the effort to be more considerate both to me and to others, to try and empathize if it doesn't get in the way of his focus, to try and to simply be aware of me. At first he made no effort and I spent my days on tenterhooks, wondering if I was simply one of a long line of experiments, holding his attention only briefly, but when he understood that I was upset and we spoke about it he began to reassure me. I think he also does it to reassure himself that I am not going away either. He is deeply insecure—he's been so long without affection and friendship that he cannot believe it now that he has both. And that scares me too. I tease him that I am completely deleted from his mind when he's thinking but he says that I am always there, running like some background program. I say that I am his spyware software, looking after him even if he doesn't know it.

Oh, we still fight. Sometimes wildly and loudly. Over something particularly insensitive he's done. Over a lack of common sense. And over the other's recklessness. That most of all. He will scream at me for putting myself in harm's way, and I will yell at him that I wouldn't need to put myself in harm's way if he weren't so bloody stupid, arrogant and irresponsible.

I am terrified that he won't come home someday, because I don't know how I will recover. He is so much a part of my life—not just my lover, but my dearest friend, and also my partner in a certain sense, the person I work with, who makes my life worth living beyond the domestic. But I do also worry about what it will do to him to lose me. I live in the world. I have friends and comfort outside of him, and it will be agonizing and a long time coming, but I will eventually move on if I lost him. But he has only me and I don't know if he will survive if I leave him in any way. God, that sounds pathetically self-centered and arrogant of me, doesn't it. Sounds like someone I know—someone who thinks that Scotland Yard would simply collapse if he were gone.

So, here we are. I love him and he loves me. We love to be together (well, most of the time—but that's true of all couples—sometimes I think I could probably kill him and I'm sure he's considered a dozen ways to dispose of my body) and we love to talk, although sometimes it's wildly past each other. It's like we're listening to the music of each other's voices as opposed to the actual words. When he's rattling off obscure bits of criminal lore, for instance, or I'm telling him why "The Lord of the Rings" is really cool. But we also love talking to each other and ferreting out some previously unknown thing about the other. And we still desire each other's bodies and never tire of exploring each other there as well. Probably more than you wanted to know—ha, ha.

I think it was love at first site, if not during that first meeting at Bart's, then certainly by that first night, but both of us were too inept to realize it. And that's why I say fateful. Because my life would have been incomplete on every level if I had not met him, mentally, emotionally and physically.

But there is a long fingered hand pushing at my laptop and a pale foot is rubbing against mine and I am afraid that I will have to stop writing now.

Until later, John


	4. Refrain

Watching Sherlock get out of bed in the morning or just after sex in general is like watching a little show of his quirks and idiosyncrasies. It's repetitious, but fascinating every time and I never tire of it.

First he sits up, arches his back and then…

…he falls forward over his long legs, arms outstretched. It shouldn't come as any surprise that he can touch his toes. It doesn't look comfortable to me—I've never been that flexible—but I have known him to fall back asleep with his face pressed into his own knees. Sometimes he'll sit up and cross his legs in a yoga pose and _then_ fall over so he looks like a turtle and next thing I know he's snoring lightly.

Finally he'll shake himself awake (or sit up with a jerk as he starts to roll to one side), scratch his ribs, tousle his already bed-headed hair so that it's shooting out in all directions, swing his legs off the bed and hop off—not that he needs to, the bed's not that high—but it's just one of those things he does.

He sleeps in his pajamas—always—but if it's after sex and he's naked, he'll dig around in the tangled duvet to retrieve his pajama bottoms. He climbs into them by bending over completely and pulling his legs up one by one so that for a moment he looks like a stork, a stork with a very nice arse, mind you. (He dresses to the right.) If they're drawstring, he'll pull them tight around his waist (and he wears his trousers at his waist unlike most men) and peering down his chest, chin on his sternum, carefully tie a bow.

But the best bit is if they're elastic. He pulls them up, holds the waistband away from his tummy and lets it go to snap back. He was _livid_ when I pointed this out to him; because he hadn't noticed it himself. I didn't point out that there are _many_ things he doesn't observe about himself. For a few days he was meticulous about _placing_ the waistband at his waist. Until I told him it was fine, more than fine, cute even. He scowled, but went back to doing it the next day; however, he felt the need to point out that releasing the waistband allowed it to find his natural waist for comfort. (I think he just enjoys the sound.)

Next he'll put on his t-shirt if he can find it in the tangle of sheets. If he can't he fetches a new one out of the drawer so that when I strip the bed I find three or four t-shirt floating around. He can't be arsed to notice if it's inside out and often goes around the flat with the tags hanging out.

Thus outfitted, he wonders off to the bathroom scratching his bum. It's a lovely thing. What's really funny is that he usually puts on his pajamas even if he's planning on going somewhere. Like a transition from naked to fully dressed.

When he does get dressed to go outdoors, he unpacks one of those fitted shirts from their dry cleaning wrap, shakes it out and puts it on first, just slings it on, doesn't do up the buttons. Then he'll take a suit out of its dry-cleaning bag and pull on the trousers (no pants—he doesn't do pants). _Then_, with the fly undone he'll finally button the shirt to tuck it in. He seldom puts his shoes or socks on until right before he's heading out the door. He likes to be barefoot.

I like when he takes his clothes off too, but that's usually done in such haste that I can't appreciate the ritual, or I'm doing it for him, so it's moot.

**Comments: **

_John Watson sleeps naked and then wonders why he's cold._

Because you climb in and stuff your big, icy feet under mine, and press your frigid hands into my back or tummy. I know you _say_ it's affectionate, but it's really to steal my body heat. I think we should have your circulation checked.

_I can't _steal_ your body heat. I'm not some sort of magician ripping away your essence._

No, but heat dissipates towards a colder region. That's a scientific fact.

_Fine, fine, I steal your heat. You have boring socks._

I have boring socks? That's the best you could come up with? What does that have to do with anything?

_You put them on first._

I thought you just said I sleep naked.

_Since this is a comments thread I typed it, I didn't say it. But I meant in the morning, when you get dressed. You put on your socks and wander about naked but for your socks. You look absurd._

But you watch me dress all the same. ^^ Anyway, this was about how boring my socks are, not how I look in them. And you have no room; all of yours are black.

_Yes but they have a textured weave. Herringbone or houndstooth._

I should have known you were gay when I moved in. From the socks.

_**That**__ is a preposterous stereotype. I'm ashamed for you._

Two words: green underwear.

_Shut up._

How can I shut up? I'm _typing_.

_I can hear you thinking from across the room. Plus with your two fingered typing, I could fall asleep right here just waiting for your reply._

…

_John?_

_John?_

_Why have you stopped typing?_

I thought it was annoying. Anyway, I thought I wasn't supposed to bother you because you were 'researching.'

…

…

Oh, come on, don't sulk.

…

…

I know you haven't fallen asleep over there. I can hear you breathing erratically.

…

_Do I really look silly when I dress?_

No. But you know what?

_What?_

You look better when you undress. Since you're not working anymore…

**Bizarrely, I believe that Sherlock's shirt is on inside out in the shooting scene of TGG.**


End file.
